They
say that moving house is one of the most stressful things a person
can do – along with starting a new job and… I forget the third
one, it must be trying to fix the internet or changing an insurance
policy or something, but nevertheless, all of these things can be
alleviated to some extent by having a nice drink. The reason moving
house is so stressful is things like the fact you’re spending tens
of thousands of pounds of money you haven’t earned yet on something
that you don’t really know for sure is going to turn out ok. For
the privilege of spending this money, it’s actually going to cost
you about the same amount of money again.

You
have to employ a solicitor and get a bunch of surveys done (one if
you’re lucky, three if you’re not, like us). You have to get
insurance for the property and arrange removals. You have to wrangle
and negotiate with the vendor though a useless third party at
every turn (estate agents, I’m looking at you). You have to switch
over all your utilities and change your address with every
organisation that is aware you exist. You have to figure out how
you’re going to get to work… think about furnishings (because
items you bought for one home just don’t fit in another)… fix
things that you know need fixing… find new things that you didn’t
know needed fixing (sometimes even things you didn’t know existed
that need fixing)… decorate… spend more time in B&Q than you
think you can bear… try to figure out how to stop the toilet seat
from falling of its own accord without taking the toilet out
altogether…

Repeatedly,
during and after all this, a drink would very much come in handy but
oh, it doesn’t stop there. It’s not all sink into your seat and
relax. Now you’ve got to be thinking where are the local pubs?
Are they any good? Is there somewhere I can pick up some decent beers
on my way home from work? Where am I going to keep all my bottles and
glasses? What’s the local supermarket like for beers and spirits?
Why didn’t I think of all these things before?

So
that’s what I’m going to be looking at this week. To be fair,
most of it is fun. The point is, for the alcothusiast, moving house
has implications concerning your drinking.

moving day drinks

In
January this year, Mrs Cake and I moved from Levenshulme, where we’d
been living for 7 years around the M60 a bit, to Flixton and this is
how we have been finding things – with a very specific
booze-related focus.

Shops

Very
important; where can I get me booze from? Well, let’s face
it, both our old home and our new home are in suburbs of Manchester,
so you’re never going to be far from an offie or a supermarket.

Levenshulme
is situated on the busy A6, halfway between Manchester and Stockport
and is a very blue collar to no collar area – by which I
mean it’s working class or whatever is below that – not-working
class. Demographically, it is composed of a fairly sizeable Irish
community along with more recent immigrants from all over Eastern
Europe, Asia and Africa. To top it off there are the young
professionals and young families looking to get a cheap foothold in
the housing market.

What
all that means is that you have lots of ethnic grocery stores,
newsagents and various takeaways as well as one or two small sized
supermarkets like Tesco Metro, Iceland and a little Asda. Unless you
have access to a car and can make it further afield to the big Tesco
in Burnage, then your choice of booze is the small varieties the kind
of stores mentioned earlier tend to carry. So you can get some mass
produced cans, some uninteresting spirits and a token selection of
wine but if you want craft beers or special spirits you need to be
looking elsewhere. A little further up the road there is also a small
Morrison’s and an Aldi, so you’ve got the bottled for Aldi
stuff within reach also.

Flixton
is officially a part of Urmston, but it’s just on the edge –
almost the countryside. If you don’t know Urmston, it’s actually
like a small town in itself. It has a town centre and all that, so on
top of the local newsagents and mini markets on your various street
corners, at the Eden Square precinct you’ve also got a small
to medium sized Sainsburys (which tends to be better for spirits
offers, though this one has a depressingly small selection of beers),
an Aldi which is so inadequately sized that is is almost impossible
to shop in at the weekend – unless you go first thing on a Sunday,
but that can be a problem for the alcothusiast, for obvious reasons,
and a Home Bargains where you can pick up some low price, low quality
ales. There are a couple of beer shops, too.

The
Urmston Beer and Wine Shop and Bargain Booze turned out to be little
more than crap newsagents with a bit more booze than your average.
Bargain Booze even appears to be the kind of place that kids hang out
outside of – though not in a threatening way; the ones I saw had a
middle class goth vibe about them.

The
Prairie Schooner is a bit more worthwhile though. Doubling up as a
pub and beer shop, they have a selection of guest ales to drink on
the premises and a selection of craft beers that you can also buy to
take home with you. You’re not going to go in there to get a crate
for a party, but with 6 for £10 offers, you can pick up something
you haven’t had before for your Distinct Beers Challenge.

There’s
also a small market where a guy sells a selection of beers from a
stall.

Pubs

For
the fairly short stretch of road that Levy covers, there are a
veritable shit-ton of pubs, though they are typically of low quality.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a good night out drinking there,
it’s just – shall we say – distinctive.

I
have to admit to not having been in all of them. I’m sure they’re
fine for the most part, but they do look dodgy and unwelcoming from
the outside. The best (while I still lived there) were The Bluebell
(a former winner of Pub of the Year), which is a large Samuel Smiths
pub, purveying all the ales and spirits they are known for, and the
Fiddler’s Green, which is a friendly and tidy Irish pub that’s
good for watching football matches. Sadly the selection of beer here
doesn’t rise above standard fare like Guinness, Foster’s and
Heineken and the beer garden is just a concrete yard. They do have
Powers whisky though, which is a nice authentic Irish touch.

Elsewhere
you’ve got The Levenshulme which is a proper “local” pub with
its regulars, and that I’m told is known for lock-ins, though I’ve
never been to one. Shabby on the inside, beer varieties are similarly
limited, though you can get one or two brands of premium lager.

In
the centre there are two sectarian pubs – The Union and The
Horsehoe. They are round the corner from one another. One flies the
Loyalist flag, the other the Republican flag. I’ve only been in one
(I think it was The Horseshoe) and again, beer choice was poor, it
was shabby, and the layout was weird.

The
M19 is a sports-type bar with irregular opening hours that has been
known to host comedy nights. I went to a free one with Mrs Cake where
we saw a guy completely die on his arse. It was very embarrassing.

Other
Levy pubs such as Hennigan’s Sports Bar and The Sidings I sadly
can’t claim to have been to.

Finally,
there’s the Klondyke Club which is up a back road, friendly, very
old school, and featuring an untended bowling green and lots of
outdoor space. We went once for a beer festival that turned out to be
taking place on a different weekend. They serve a selection of ales
and also have full size snooker tables that you can play on without
being a member for something amazing like £2 an hour as long as
members don’t want to play.

Oh,
I nearly forgot POD, a café that serves continental beers like Kozel
and Kaltenberg. It’s small, and quite continental in style.

Levy
isn’t the sort of place you’re going to attract your friends to
from other areas to for a pub crawl, but if you want to grab a few
pints on the way home or go out for some drinks in the afternoon or
evening, you can have a really good time. For the most part, the
people of Levy are friendly and welcoming. Don’t worry if you’re
better dressed than the majority of them. That sounds a bit snobby;
honestly, who do I think I’m talking to? I can only relate my
perceptions, anyway.

On
Saturdays there is now a hipster craft market, and that’s good
because it has an outside bar. Sadly I never got round to trying it.
Same with the new craft beer bar and art gallery, Fred’s Ale House.
That was just on the verge of opening when we left, so that remains
unexplored also.

If
that’s not good enough for you, and as I’ve said a few times
before, you can hop on a bus to The Magnet on the edge
of Stockport.

Bringing
our roundup to the Urmston area now, The Hop House is a new hipster
type place with continental service (meaning you can sit down and
wait to be served) and a variety of plates (such as cheese
boards) on offer. Here you can get a small selection of fancy
continental lagers, ales and IPAs for a reasonable price.

The
Church Inn is the nearest pub to my house, in the villagiest looking
part of Flixton which is ruined only by what should be another quaint
pub actually being a Thai restaurant and pub. Nothing against
Thai restaurants, but I would just prefer another pub. The Church Inn
has tables for sitting out in the summer and numerous evening
activities like open mic, pub quiz and darts but the beer selection
is disappointing. You have to give them credit for offering Moretti
on tap, but from what I’ve seen so far, the “four guest ales”
tends to be er… three (I’m not sure now whether they ever did
advertise them as four…) and fairly standard when you’ve been
round the block a few times – Tribute, Abbot Ale and the like.
Still, for convenience and friendly local atmosphere, it looks good.
They do food, too. There were actually people in there having dessert
the first time we went in. The layout is a bit country pub –
alcoves and the like.

Halfway
between our house and Urmston town centre is The Bird I’Th Hand,
which is about as Lancashire a pub name as you can get. If you
continue into Urmston (up Flixton Road) you get a bit of a run of
pubs but, coming from ours, this is where it starts. It’s a
friendly, local-type pub with a decent selection of lagers and ales
(two house, two guest), a beer garden and a licence to show the
footy. In contrast to the Church Inn, the layout is quite spacious
and open with two main drinking areas.

There’s
also The Garrick’s Head, which is towards the Trafford General
Hospital. That’s a large but pretty standard pub that serves food
and shows the footy.

The
Chadwick is a scruffy looking pub in spite of fairly recently having
had a facelift. Inside it’s still old school with a very
disappointing selection of beers, but a friendly staff and clientele.
It’s a United pub though, so not somewhere you want to go if you
support Liverpool (like me) or City – not that it would be
dangerous (in general), just that you won’t be wanting to be
surrounded by United fans.

The
Steamhouse sits on the platform of Urmston train station, so it’s
handy for when your train is delayed, though I can’t really think
of any journey from Urmston that would benefit starting with a pint.
It’s nice to get off here on the way home though, grab a few pints
and then jump on a later train to Flixton – or do the walk. It’s
cosy and friendly enough, and it has a wide range of reasonably
priced beers – lagers, ales, German pilsners and the like. I’d
advise that you stay away from their own brews though – I’ve
tried two, and they were awful. One tasted like that liquid they give
you to rinse with at the dentist. In all fairness, they did offer me
an opportunity to try it before I bought it and, as ever I figured
there’s no beer bad enough that I couldn’t drink a pint of it. I
was right on that score, but it was awful.

Then
there’s the Roebuck, which is away from Urmston town centre itself,
near to the Chassen Road train station. This one has gone for a
gastro-pub aesthetic with decent pub food and a selection of
Joseph Holt beers.

Bevano
is a café-bar type place, open long hours, serving decent food and
serving an unchanging selection of four or five beers. I would go
here a lot more often if they would have a new beer in from time to
time.

I
still need to try some of the other pubs, so I can’t really comment
on them yet. Nevertheless, there has to be an exhaustive Urmston pub
crawl at some point, so don’t think this is the last you’ve heard
of it.

new booe shelf!

Storing
your booze and glasses

Finally,
some reflections on sorting out the booze in your new house. Where
does it go? It might not be a problem for you if you’ve bought a
house with more storage space than you had before, but sadly we
haven’t. The house is bigger, but it isn’t until you actually
move in of course, and try putting all your kitchen utensils away (or
until your wife does, should I say), that you realise you have fewer
and smaller kitchen cabinets than you had in your last place. And
with no wall cabinets, there’s nothing to sit your bottles on.

For
the first few months then, my bottles were sitting in a huddle
underneath the boiler. It had been frustrating because I couldn’t
see what I’d got, and it made it harder to decide what to have.
Luckily though, Mrs Cake made finding a home for the family one of
our top priorities, so there is now a bar-type cabinet in one corner
of the dining room. That will be followed by finding a home for my
bar optics – that I’m super excited about getting on the wall;
absinthe at the push of a… tap? You bet your ass.

So
there you go. I think that about covers it. It may not be useful to
the vast majority of the world, but you can just think of this post
as another piece of the puzzle that is my drinking saga.

2 comments:

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Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.